The labor market is a tool of society. It's like any other tool: it can be fixed or supplemented or even swapped out with something else if it doesn't perform its function effectively.
It's true, and while I also believe teachers should be paid more relative to other occupations, labor market has one thing going for it that makes it hard to replace - it's a very simple process that doesn't require any central coordination.
>>Teacher pay is not correlated to outcome. The US pays more for its teachers than Finland and other counties with much better outcomes.
I do want to point out that these two points aren't actually related. Just because the US pays more for lesser outcomes does not mean that teacher pay is anti-correlated or uncorrelated to outcome.
Some public schools can't find a decent calculus teacher at the prices they're paying. On the other hand, if they paid a janitor to sit in the classroom while AP Calc students teach themselves, in many places that would work out great.
Thank you, I was trying to show by pointing out an example of low pay and high outcomes that pay is not corrected. But I don’t want to say that there’s a negative correlation.
I do think it’s fair, unless I see data that shows it, that pay is not correlated to outcome.
I think there are multiple factors for outcomes and I think further research will help figure this out. But for now, I think it’s false to say that we will get better outcomes if we increase pay. I can think of a few outcomes, but have no data, that would result in higher pay with worse outcomes (eg, higher pay crowds out more passionate but less credentialed teachers who aren’t in it for the money).